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What is a Begriffsschrift?
Jonathan Barnes*
Abstract
Before Frege, the term 'Begriťfsschrifť was used to indicate (i) a language the expressions of
which adequately represent the structure of the judgements or concepts which they signify, and
(ii) a language the written signs of which designate ideas rather than sounds. In 1879 Frege fol-
lows (i). Later he adopts (ii) - and with it the Aristotelian theory of language in which it is
embedded.
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66 Jonathan Barnes
of Begriffsschrift), and Latino sine flexione (in which Peano sometimes wrote
and sometimes lectured), and - how can I resist it? - La langue bleue or
Bolak.2
To be sure, Frege's new language did not have the aspirations of Bolak.
Most artificial languages were supposed to possess the power and flexibility
of a natural language: you can write verse in Volopiik, you can make love in
Latino sine flexione. Their pretensions are social and political: like the flags by
which ships communicate, they are supranational; a Frenchman and a German
will chat with one another in Bolak - and had Bismarck and Napoleon so chat-
ted, the Franco-Prussian War might have been prevented. Nor was Leibniz less
optimistic: once his universal language is adopted, science will march forward
and men will quarrel no more - all will be resolved in a calculemus?
Frege's language had a more modest aim and a more restricted scope: it
was to be a language of science (and in the first instance of arithmetic); it was
to be capable of expressing all that a scientist might want (in his scientific
moments) to express - and nothing more. Just as a microscope is superior to
an eye for certain scientific purposes and useless for most of the ends of every-
day life, so Frege's new language is superior to German in the study or in the
laboratory and perfectly out of place in the salon or the boudoir. (The inept
comparison with a microscope was perhaps a nod to Emst Abbe.4)
I have heard it denied that Frege was out to create a new language: he
speaks in that vein - but surely it is a rhetorical exaggeration, a façon de par-
ler ? Well, you might decide that something in which you cannot write a billet
doux or tell a joke does not deserve the name of language. But if Frege did not
invent a language, what did he invent? Two possible answers to the question
must be scouted.
First, Frege did not invent a code or a notation - he and Sam Morse were
not in the same line of business. A Morse formula - a certain sequence of dots
and dashes - is a funny way of writing or sounding an English (or German or
French) expression. You understand the formula only when you know which
English (or German or French) expression it encodes. A Fregean formula is
not like that: in order to understand a Fregean formula you do not have to find
some corresponding English formula - no more than, in order to understand
a German formula, you have to discover a corresponding English formula.
! For a history of these things see Couturat and Léau, 1907; for Leibniz' contributions
see Trendelenburg, 1867; Knecht, 1981.
3 See esp. Leibniz, 1673 (quoted in Trendelenburg, 1867, pp. 32-37). - The calculemus
occurs in a note printed in Leibniz, 1 890, p. 200.
4 Or was it taken from Leibniz? See Leibniz, 1673, p. 241 (cited by Trendelenburg,
1867, pp. 36-37).
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What is a Begriffsschrift? 67
The two sequences are not sentences, they are not well-formed, they belong
to no language: they are macaroni. (To be sure, they are intelligible enough;
but then plenty of nonsense is perfectly intelligible.)
Frege's invention, as the title of Begriffsschrift proclaims, is 'modelled on
the formular language of arithmetic'. To what language does the following
sequence of signs belong?
2 + 4 = 6.
If so, then had this paper been written in German, the sequence would have
abbreviated a German sentence; and in general, one and the same sequence of
symbols will belong to an indefinitely large number of languages - and, by a
felicitous coincidence, will express the very same thought in each of the lan-
guages to which it belongs. According to Frege, the sequence
2+4=6
That is to say, should the new language be a written language or a spoken lan-
guage?
Frege offers three reasons in favour of preferring - for scientific purposes
- what he calls 'signs for the eye'. First, visible signs are more sharply defined
than audible signs: they are less prone to be confused with one another - ink
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68 Jonathan Barnes
is less labile than noise. Secondly, visible signs endure longer than audible
signs: you may look back to the top of the page or turn back to the start of the
chapter - ink fades less fast than noise. Thirdly, visible signs are made on a
two-dimensional surface, so that their vertical as well as their horizontal order
may be made to carry significance: audible signs occupy one dimension, the
before and after of time.
The three reasons are repeated, in almost the same words, in the paper on
Peano's Begriffsschrift which Frege published in 1896.5 He presumably
thought that they were good reasons; and so they are: that is to say, they advert
to certain contingent facts which give to writing - in certain contexts and for
certain ends - an advantage over speech. But if Frege's reasons are unexcep-
tionable, the question to which they are addressed is queer.
Should the new language be spoken or written? shall we choose signs for
the eyes or signs for the ears? Well, why think that we must choose the one or
the other? why not have both?6 When an improbable student assures me that
he has mastered a new language over the vacation, I do not ask him whether
it was a written or a spoken language; for I suppose that languages - most ordi-
nary languages - are both written and spoken. Frege asks us to pick either A
or B, and he urges the advantages of A; but we might plausibly complain that
he has suppressed the most enticing option - the conjunctive option of both A
and B. And a reason for preferring A to B is no reason for preferring A to both
A and B.
Frege did not overlook the conjunctive option. He did not suppose that
most languages are both written and spoken. He supposed that most languages
are spoken. The supposition was a commonplace, and ancient.
At the beginning of his de Interpretatione Aristotle observes that
items in the voice are symbols of passions in the soul, and written items of items in the
voice. (16a3-4)
That is to say, the written expressions of a language represent or stand for cer-
tain spoken expressions, just as the spoken expressions of a language repre-
sent or stand for certain psychological states or events. This thesis is one ele-
ment in the semantic theory which commentators read into the opening
paragraph of the de Interpretatione. The theory invokes 'written items', or
inscriptions; 'items in the voice', or utterances; 'passions in the soul', which
later Aristotelians generally identified as thoughts or concepts; and things.
3 The second of the three reasons is found in Trendelenburg, 1867, p. 2 (who adds that
written signs are readily transportable).
6 'The signs <of the universal language> must be not only visible but also audible'
(Trendelenburg, 1867, p. 22).
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What is a Begriffsschrift? 69
Modern Greek is a living reality that linguists can study directly, without the mediation of
writing. The written traces of the Greek language are just that, traces of linguistic realities,
not the realities themselves. (11.9.98: p. 22)
The thesis also finds explicit recognition both early and late in Frege's oeu-
vre. The longer of the two unpublished pieces on Boole's logic, which Frege
wrote in 1880, observes that a Begriffsschrift
7 1880, pp. 13-14. - The phrase 'signs of signs' occurs, in a similar context, in
Humboldt, 1826, p. 1 1 1. No doubt it was a common formula.
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70 Jonathan Barnes
Here, then, we have the Aristotelian thesis presented in all its simplicity -
and presented as a commonplace. The thesis returns, near the end of Frege's
life, in a qualified version:
A sentence which a writer inscribes is in the first place a recipe for the construction of a
spoken sentence in a language in which the sequence of sounds serves as a sign for the
expression of a sense. Hence at first there is only a mediated connexion between written
signs and an expressed sense. Once this connexion is established we can regard the written
or printed sentence as an immediate expression of a thought, hence as a sentence in the
proper sense of the word. (1923+, p. 280)
The Aristotelian thesis is here said to hold only 'in the first place': at first, I
must look for the sound associated with the inscription and then hunt the sense
associated with the sound; but as I get used to the game, I may learn to look
directly for the sense on seeing the inscription. The Aristotelian thesis is mod-
ified, but not abandoned.
A language is a system of significant expressions. I shall say that a lan-
guage is Aristotelian if it is a system of significant sounds. A theory of mean-
ing for an Aristotelian language will make reference to utterances, it will pro-
duce theorems of the form
But the addition of a notation is an optional extra; and it will have no effect
on the semantic theory of the language.
According to the Aristotelian thesis, natural languages are Aristotelian lan-
guages.8
Whether or not the Aristotelian thesis is true, it is easy to conceive of the
contrary of an Aristotelian language, of an 'anti-Aristotelian' language. An
anti-Aristotelian language is a system of significant inscriptions. A theory of
meaning for an anti- Aristotelian language will produce theorems of the form
Inscription I means such and such.
8 That is to say, most natural languages are Aristotelian: the Aristotelian thesis purports
to be a law of sublunar nature; and, like all such laws, it holds not universally but for the most
part.
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What is a Begriffsschrift? 71
9 The terms 'Aristotelian' and 4 anti- Aristotelian' are contraries, not contradictories:
there may, in principle, be languages which are 'neutral', neither Aristotelian nor anti-
Aristotelian. The semantic theory for such a language will produce theorems of the form
Expression E means such and such.
Where an expression is neither an inscription nor an utterance (or else it is one or the other,
indifferently). I suppose that natural languages are, in this sense, neutral; but I have no room
to explore the matter.
10 Letter to Frege, 14.10.96, in Frege, 1976, pp. 188-189.
11 In his review of Begriffsschrift - known to me from Bynum, 1972, p. 224 n.§.
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72 Jonathan Barnes
Such a manner of designation ... will be, in contrast to word-signs which are more or less
indifferent to the content of the ideas, a characteristic language of concepts, and, in con-
trast to the particular languages of different peoples, a universal language of things.12
On this see Trendelenburg, Historische Beiträge zur Philosophie, 3rd volume. (1879, p. V, n.*)
Frege is alluding to a paragraph which occurs a couple of pages after the pas-
sage I have just quoted. Presumably he read the essay from the beginning; and
it seems likely that he read it to the end.13
Trendelenburg's paper was first published in the Abhandlungen of the
Berlin Academy for 1855. The word 'Begriffsschrift' had made its Academy
début some thirty years earlier. The Abhandlungen for 1826 print an address
which Wilhelm von Humboldt gave in 1824 under the title: 'Über die Buch-
stabenschrift und ihren Zusammenhang mit dem Sprachbau'. Having distin-
guished different forms and functions of linguistic signs, Humboldt declares
that
The individuality of words, in every one of which there is always something more than
merely its logical definition, is so attached to sound that this immediately awakens in the
soul their peculiar effects. A sign which strives after the concept and neglects the sound can
express this only imperfectly. A system of such signs merely reproduces the bare concepts
of the outer and inner world; but language is meant to contain this world itself, changed, to
be sure, into thought-signs but nonetheless in the whole plenitude of its rich, colourful and
living multiplicity.
But there never has been, and there never can be, a Begriffsschrift which is modelled purely
on concepts and which has not been profoundly influenced by the words, contained in deter-
minate sounds, of the language for which it was invented. . . . The undeniable advantage of
a Begriffsschrift - the fact that it can be understood by people of different languages - does
not outweigh the disadvantages which it brings in from other sides.14
In a later paper Humboldt remarks that 'a script represents either concepts or
sounds [Töne], it is either an idea-script or a sound-script [Ideenschrift oder
Lautschrift]' . A page later he uses 'Begriffsschrift' as a synonym for 'Ideen-
12 Trendelenburg, 1867, pp. 3-4. - This passage contains the only occurrence of the word
'Begriffsschrift' in Trendelenburg's paper.
13 Heinrich Scholz was apparently the first scholar to point to the use of the word
4 Begriffsschrift' in Trendelenburg: see Frege, 1977, p. 115. On Frege's reading of
Trendelenburg see Sluga, 1980, pp. 48-52. See also above, n.4; and note e.g. the phrase 'noth-
ing is left to guesswork' in Trendelenburg, 1867, p. 45, and Frege, 1879, p. 3.
14 1826, pp. 112-113. (So far as I know, this passage was first brought to the attention of
Fregean scholarship by Thiel, 1995, p. 20).
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What is a Begriffsschrift? 73
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74 Jonathan Barnes
The genial metaphor dates from the 1650s: the idea behind it is older. Sir
Thomas Browne:
Certainly of all men that suffered from the confusion of Babel, the ¿Egyptians found the
best evasion; for, though words were confounded, they invented a language of things, and
spake unto each other by common notions in Nature, whereby they discoursed in silence,
and were intuitively understood from the theory of their Expresses. (1646, p. 419)
('the theory of their Expresses': the observation of their written signs.) And
my Lord Bacon, having duly cited the de Interpretatione for the Aristotelian
thesis, adds:
And we understand further that it is the use of China and the kingdoms of the high Levant
to write in Characters Real, which express neither letters nor words in gross, but Things or
Notions ... (1605, p. 121)
The Egyptian sages ... do not use written signs which set out phrases and sentences, they
do not use marks which imitate sounds and utterances of propositions; rather, they write
pictures, and inscribe one picture for each thing. ( Enneads V viii 6)
The Egyptian sages were masters of a sacred language; their script depicted
things, not sounds; theirs was a Bilderschrift or picture-script - and a Bilder-
schrift is a kind of Begriffsschrift, a sort of ideography.
Not everyone shared the enthusiasm of Browne, or of Plotinus, for the the-
ory of expresses;18 but the hieroglyphs were recognized, from antiquity, as an
exception to the natural rule that languages are Aristotelian. Champollion
characterized such anti-Aristotelian languages by way of the word 'idéo-
graphique'. Humboldt used 'ideographisch' in the same sense; and for a noun
he employed 'Ideenschrift' - and also 'Begriffsschrift' (which perhaps was his
own invention).
As for Frege, in the essay on Boole he implies that the signs of a Begriffs-
schrift are 'signs of things [Sache]' (1880, p. 14). A sentence in 'Berechtigung'
is more explicit:
The formula-language of arithmetic is a Begriffsschrift since it expresses things [die Sache]
immediately, without the mediation of the sound. (1882, p. 54)
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What is a Begriffsschrift? 75
system of rules in accordance with which you may express thoughts immedi-
ately without the mediation of sound, by written or printed signs (p. 666).
That is to say, Frege uses the word 'Begriffsschrift' in pretty much its stan-
dard German sense.19
I say 'pretty much' for two reasons. First, an ideography expresses ideas
or concepts, a Fregean Begriffsschrift does not. Rather, the expressions of a
Fregean Begriffsschrift express 'things' (in 1880 and 1882) or 'thoughts' (in
1904); and no doubt we should say - though I do not think that Frege himself
ever said so - that the signs of a Fregean Begriffsschrift express senses. Now
senses are not concepts but objects. This is no trifling fact about Frege's
semantic ideas, and it might be taken to induce a significant difference
between Frege's Begriffsschrift and a Champollionic ideography.
Secondly, an ideography is a script: a Fregean Begriffsschrift is a language.
Hieroglyphics is not a language: it is a way of writing Egyptian. The Fregean
Begriffsschrift is not a way of writing German: it is a language. Nor should it
be thought that a Begriffsschrift is simply a language whose script is ideo-
graphic. If a language is a Begriffsschrift, then its script is ideographic - that
much is an evidence. But if the script of a language is ideographic, it does not
follow that the language is a Begriffsschrift; for from the fact that the script
of a language is ideographic, nothing follows about the semantic status of any
spoken utterances.
Frege's use of the term 'Begriffsschrift' does not, for these two reasons,
coincide with the Champollionic use of 'idéographie' - or with Humboldt's
use of 'Begriffsschrift'. Nonetheless, you might reasonably believe that the
differences are less important than the similarities. Frege's use of the term to
designate a language rather than a script is readily intelligible. Frege implic-
itly corrects Champollion's false, 'Aristotelian', notion that linguistic signs
signify ideas or thoughts. But at bottom Champollion and Frege agree; for the
essential feature alike of an ideography and of a Fregean Begriffsschrift is the
fact that inscriptions are immediate bearers of sense.
Then why did Frege call his new language a Begriffsschrift? He called it
so because it was an anti-Aristotelian language - because it was a Begriffs-
schrift.
This answer is comfortingly banal; and it carries a moral: the correct Eng-
lish translation of Frege's word 'Begriffsschrift' is 'ideography'. The first
reported occurrence of any member of the ideographic family dates from 1823
- in an anonymous review of Champollion's Letter to M. Datier:
" Frege lectured on his Begriffsschrift almost every year of his academic life. It is natu-
ral to guess that each time he will have explained what the word 'Begriffsschrifť meant - but
Camap's notes (Frege, 1996) record no such explanation.
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76 Jonathan Barnes
In the course of his ten years' lucubrations, he has produced two Memoirs to prove, that
neither the hieratic or sacerdotal, nor the demotic or vulgar, writing is alphabetical, (as, he
says, was generally thought,) but ideographic , like the pure hieroglyphics; that is to say,
that they are, like the latter, the signs or pictures of ideas, and not the representation of
sounds. But neither is this a discovery due to M. Champollion, nor are his results quite cor-
rect.20
The English 'ideography' has the same origin as the German 'Begriffsschrift'.
Jourdain used 'ideography' for 'Begriffsschrift' in his 1912 paper on Frege:
he used it without explanation, as though it were evidently the correct trans-
lation; and Frege offered no objection.21 Yet few anglophone scholars now
speak of Frege's ideography. Some use 'concept script' or 'concept writing'
or 'conceptual notation' or the like; many treat the German 'Begriffsschrift'
as an English word (as I have myself done in the preceding pages). The Eng-
lish formulas attempt to do justice to the two parts of the German compound.
But they are ugly; they are false to the German (as well use 'railway court' for
'Bahnhof'); and they are scarcely intelligible ('concept script' has no dis-
cernible sense - unless you know that it is meant as a counter for 'Begriffs-
schrift'). As to 'Begriffsschrift' as an English word, I am all in favour of lin-
guistic imports - but why import what you grow at home? 'Ideography' is the
English for 'Begriffsschrift'.
So much for the moral. I return to the comfortingly banal thesis - which
does not tell the whole truth. For I have hitherto suppressed the earliest text in
which Frege says anything about the word 'Begriffsschrift':
In the expressions <of the new language> everything is omitted which has no significance
for inference . In § 3 I have designated as conceptual content the only thing which interests
me ... Hence the name 'Begriffsschrift'. (1879, p. IV)
The only sort of content or meaning possessed by the expressions of the new
language will be the sort of content or meaning which is pertinent to inference.
Frege will dub this sort of meaning 'conceptual content', 'begriffliche Inhalt'.
Hence 'Begriffsschrift' is an appropriate appellation for the new language. A
language is a Begriffsschrift if and only if the only content which its expres-
sions possess is conceptual content.
20 anon, 1823, p. 189. - With the last sentence cf. Humboldt, 1880, p. 116: 'Mr. Young,
who is nice about questions of literary property, admires the work of Champollion but claims
that it does no more than extend his own ideas'. For the story of the decipherment, and the jeal-
ousies and intrigues which surrounded it, see Hartleben, 1906, 1, pp. 345-500.
21 On the first page of his article Jourdain speaks of 'the " Begriffsschrifť"; in a footnote
to the same page he uses 'this ideography'; and thereafter he always uses 'ideography', except
that the title of Frege's monograph remains in German. For the comments which Frege sent to
Jourdain before the publication of the article - and which Jourdain largely incorporated into
the published version - see Frege, 1983, pp. 116-124.
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What is a Begriffsschrift? 77
This is a clear explanation - clear, I mean, to the extent that the notion of
conceptual content is clear. Yet it is not only different from the Champollionic
explanation which Frege was to offer a year or so later - it is not even equiv-
alent to that explanation. For it is plain that an ideography, in Champollion's
sense, need not be restricted to the expression of conceptual content (Egypt-
ian hieroglyphics was a colourful script); nor, conversely, is there any reason
why the restriction to conceptual content should be the exclusive property of
ideographies.
It is evident why the explanation which Frege offered in 1879 was later
replaced: the phrase 'conceptual content', on which it is based, was soon repu-
diated by its inventor. But how did Frege hit upon the Champollionic expla-
nation as a replacement? And why did he offer the 1879 explanation in the
first place? I have nothing to say on the former question: perhaps Frege looked
up the term 'Begriffsschrift' in a dictionary, perhaps he came across the word
in a book he was reading, perhaps it was a topic of conversation at one of Ernst
Abbe's intellectual soirées.22 In any event, he must have been peculiarly
pleased to find that he could redefine the term in a manner which both did jus-
tice to German usage and fitted his new language to a T.
Whence came the 1879 explanation? Trendelenburg offers no explicit def-
inition of the word 'Begriffsschrift'. But his text gives a hint. It does not hint
at the Champollionic explanation - on the contrary, the signs of a Begriffs-
schrift 'must be not only visible but also audible'.23 Rather, the text suggests
something like this: a Begriffsschrift is a language in which the form and struc-
ture of the signs, uttered or written, correspond to the structure and form of
the ideas which they present. This is certainly not identical with Frege's 1879
explanation; and it is certainly less than pellucid. But it is easy enough to imag-
ine how Frege might have arrived at his explanation on the basis of what he
found in Trendelenburg. It does not follow, but it is an economical supposi-
tion, that Frege did indeed take the term 'Begriffsschrift' from Trendelenburg.
Then whence came Trendelenburg's un-Champollionic notion? (It is clear
that he did not invent it.) I have not hit upon any earlier and pertinent use of
'Begriffsschrift'; but the word was surely calqued on 'idéographie' (or per-
haps on 'Ideographie') - and about the family to which that term belongs there
is a little more to be said.24
In his philosophical Handwörterbuch, the first edition of which was done
in 1 827, Wilhelm Traugott Krug explains that
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78 Jonathan Barnes
idéographies ... is the art ... of expressing ideas - the word here signifies, quite generally,
all common representations or concepts - by means of a script intelligible to all men.
"See Hindenburg, 1803, pp. 132, 143; and p. 144 for the letter from Bürmann. -
Hindenburg (1741-1808) was a mathematician best known for his work in combinatorial
mathematics. He was a professor at Leipzig - first of philosophy and then of physics. -
Bürmann was a professor at the Handelsakademie in Mannheim. I do not know if his Essai , of
which Hindenburg prints fragments, was ever completed; but in 1807 he published a
Programme de la Pangraphie, partie fondamentale de la caractéristique syntactique, système
de notation universelle déduit d'éléments simples, méthodiquement combinés. The Deutsches
biographisches Archiv gives him no dates and no forenames; but perhaps he is to be identified
with the mathematician Heinrich Bürmann, who died in 1817.
26 French historical dictionaries, which cite Champollion as the first to use any word
from the ideographical family, must be corrected.
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What is a Begriffsschrift? 79
third. I am not sure whether the word 'idéographie' was implicitly defined by
the conjunction of the three elements, or whether one, or two, of the elements
were taken to constitute the definition and the others, or the other, construed
as a corollary. But since the three elements are distinct, it would make for clar-
ity to speak of three separate notions of what an ideography is, of three senses
of the term 'ideography'.
What is all this to Frege? Well, the first of the three notions has nothing to
do with his conception of a Begriffsschrift. The second notion corresponds to
what I have called the Champollionic explanation; and it thus matches Frege's
revised account of what a Begriffsschrift is. The third notion answers to Tren-
delenburg's conception, and hence lies behind Frege's 1879 account of the
matter. Frege called his new language a Begriffsschrift because it was a
Begriffsschrift; but in 1879 it was a Begriffsschrift in one sense - and in quite
another thereafter.27
References
Anon. 1823. review of Champollion, 1822. The Quarterly Review 28: 188-196.
Auerbach, F. 1918. Ernst Abbe: sein Leben , sein Wirken , seine Persönlichkeit . Grosse Männer
5. Leipzig.
Bacon, F. 1605. Of the Advancement of Learning. In J. M. Robertson (ed.), The Philosophical
Works of Francis Bacon , London, 1905.
Browne, T. 1646. Pseudodoxia Epidemica. Ed. R. Robbins, Oxford, 1981.
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